Memoirs of Emma, lady Hamilton, the friend of Lord Nelson and the court of Naples; (38 page)

raptured over Emma's " Attitudes " and her personality, which called forth an interesting book by a well-known author. It was the more enraptured when the whole party witnessed a performance at the " German Theatre." Both Emma and Nelson exhibited their usual generosity towards the " poor devils " who applied to them. Another and a different experience may be also mentioned as indicating how really artless they were. A wine merchant of the city hastened to beg the hero's acceptance of his offering—six bottles of the rarest hock, dating from the vintage of 1625. Emma was warmly grateful, and urged Nelson to receive the present. Nelson took it with the thankful compliment that he would drink a bottle of it after each future victory, in " honour of the donor." This " respectable" wine merchant cannot have been so simple a benefactor as he appeared. Hock one hundred and eighty years old must have been quite un-drinkable, and only fit for a museum.

And Nelson was wondering whether and how his wife would greet his arrival. When, on November 6, they reached Yarmouth, after such a storm that only he could force the pilot to land, that wife was absent from his enthusiastic welcomers. Amid the music, the bunting, the deputations that seized his one hand, the offended Fanny was missing. The carriage was dragged by the cheerers to the Wrestlers' Inn, before which the troops paraded. The whole party marched in state churchward to a service of thanksgiving; the town was illuminated, his departure was escorted by cavalry; but the wife, no longer of his bosom, stayed in London with the dear old rector, who had hurried up to greet him from Burnham-Thorpe. The two days before the capital huzza'd him, his route was one triumphal procession. His own Ipswich rivalled Yarmouth, and Colchester, Ips-

wich. But as the acclamations of the countryside rang in their ears, a single thought must have possessed the minds of Nelson and of Emma—the thought of Fanny. Nelson entered London in full uniform, with the three stars and the two golden medals on his breast. 1 It was Sunday—a day which witnessed many of the crises in his career. They all drove together to Nerot's Hotel in King Street, where Greville had already called to welcome his uncle, ailing and anxious about his pension. While Lady Hamilton disguised her tremor, Nelson was left alone with his proud father and the indignant wife, who had believed, and brooded over, every whisper against him—even the malicious slanders of the Jacobins. Joy could not be expected of her, but a word of pride in the achievements that had immortalised him, and won her the very title which she immoderately prized, she might surely have shown. Not a soft answer escaped her pinched lips. That night must have been one of hot entreaty on the one side, and cold recrimination on the other. Her, mind was thoroughly poisoned against him. He at once presented himself at the Admiralty, just as Hamilton, under Greville's tutelage, at once repaired to my Lord Grenville in Cleveland Row. Together the three attended the Lord Mayor's banquet the following night, when the sword of honour was presented, after the citizens of London, like those of Yarmouth, had unhorsed the car of triumph and themselves drawn it along the streets lined with applauding crowds, to the Mansion House. There also Lady Nelson was absent. Whether business or ovation detained him, the spectre abode in its cupboard. For a time their open breach

1 Medals were struck to commemorate his return. On one side is the medallion; on the reverse Britannia crowning his vessel with laurels. The legend round runs: " Hail, virtuous hero! Thy victories we acknowledge, and thy God." And underneath, "Return to England, November 5, 1800."

was patched up, but nevertheless the distance between them widened. Nelson was to aggravate it by harping on Emma's virtues and graces till Fanny sickened at her very name. Nor could Emma's early and friendly approaches, in which Sir William joined, have been expected to bridge it over. 1

Emma soon resumed her post as his amanuensis, his companion, his almoner, his vade mecum. Nelson again accompanied the Hamiltons on their speedy visit to Fonthill, whose bizarre master desired to compound for a peerage with Sir William. Prints exist of the postchaise with postilions, flambeaux in hand, driving the Nelsonians into the Gothic archway of that fantastic demesne. Nelson may well have thought, " Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galere! " Beckford had addressed his invitation to Emma in terms of extravagant flattery, to his " Madonna della Gloria." He singled out, too, her performance as Cleopatra for critical and special admiration. Yet so insincere was he, that some forty years afterwards he not only belittled her beauty to Cyrus Redding, but claimed the entire brunt of service to Britain for Hamilton, while his ignorance of facts is shown by the egregious errors in his account.

Nelson and Emma were always in evidence together. He ordered his wife to appear in public with himself and the Hamiltons at the theatre. Emma's sudden faintness, and Lady Nelson's withdrawal from their

1 Cf. a remarkable letter from Lady Hamilton to Lady Nelson. It bears no date, but must refer to a time shortly after their return.— " I would have done myself the honour of calling on you and Lord Nelson this day, but I am not well nor in spirits. Sir William and myself feel the loss of our good friend, the good Lord Nelson. Permit me in the morning to have the pleasure of seeing you, and hoping, my dear Lady Nelson, the continuance of your friendship, which will be in Sir William and myself for ever lasting to you and your family." And she closes by Sir William's proffer of any service possible.

box with her, gave the wife the first inkling of a secret worse even than she had suspected. A violent scene is said to have occurred between the two women, and Lady Hamilton used to assert that Nelson wandered about all night in his misery, and presented himself early next morning to implore the comfort and the companionship of his friends. Emma and Nelson continued all injured innocence. The circumstances of Horatia's birth in the January following were to be carefully veiled even from Horatia herself; nor were they ever proved till some fifty years afterwards, and even then generally disbelieved. Henceforward -Nelson and his wife were strangers; further efforts at reconciliation failed. By the March of 1801 he had provided for and repudiated her. " I have done," he was to write, " all in my power for you, and if I died, you will find I have done the same. Therefore, my only wish is to be left to myself, and wishing you every happiness, believe that I am your affectionate Nelson and Bronte." On this " letter of dismissal " she endorsed her " astonishment." That astonishment must surely have been strained.

Without question, sympathy is her due. Without question she had been grievously wronged. But her bearing, both before she had reason to be convinced of the fact and afterwards, was such perhaps as to decrease her deserts. She seems to have been more aggrieved than heart-stricken. From this time forth she withdrew completely from every member of his family except Maurice and the good old father. At Bath, or in London, she sulked and hugged her grievance, her virtue, her money, and her rank. She proceeded —naturally—to babble of the woman who had injured her, and the husband of whom she had been despoiled. Nelson's brother and sisters, who accepted Emma, always entitled her " Tom Tit," nor would they con-

cede a grain of true love to her disposition. That she was not the helpmeet for a hero was not her fault; it was her drawback and misfortune. She failed in the temperament that understands temperament, and the spirit that answers and applauds. Her piety never sought to win back the wanderer. She incensed him by desiring even now to rent Shelburne House. She caused him to feel " an outcast on shore." While she could have avenged her cause by suing for a divorce, she preferred to avenge herself on the culprits by their punishment in being barred from wedlock. After Nelson's death she litigated with his successor.

This was Emma's doing, and Nelson's. They were both pitiless, while the other was implacable. Emma could be far tenderer than gentle. She was never a gentlewoman, nor was over-delicacy her foible. Her " Sensibility " did not extend to her discarded rival, whose very wardrobe she could handle, at Nelson's bidding, and return. She rode rough-shod over poor Lady Nelson's discomfiture. " Tom Tit," she told Mrs. William Nelson in the next February, " does not come to town. She offered to go down, but was refused. She only wanted to go to do mischief to all the great Jove's relations. 'Tis now shown, all her ill treatment and bad heart. Jove has found it out."

It is a sorry, but hardly a sordid spectacle. Rather it is, in a sense, volcanic. 1 Here is no barter, no balance of interests or convenience. It is a passionate convulsion, which uprooted the wife. I can but vary the apophthegm already quoted: " Apologies only try to explain what they cannot undo."

1 On January 25 following Nelson wrote to her: "Where friendship is of so strong a cast as ours, it is no easy matter to shake it. Mine is as fixed as Mount Etna, and as warm in the inside as that mountain."—Morrison MS. 502.

CHAPTER XI

FROM PICCADILLY TO " PARADISE " MERTON

1801

IT was not long before the Hamiltons were installed in a new abode, No. 23 Piccadilly, one of the smaller houses fronting the Green Park. Sir William had been querulous over the loss of so many treasures in the Colossus —among them the second version of Romney's " Bacchante," which has never to this day reappeared. Most of their furniture had been rifled by French Jacobins. Emma promptly sold enough of her jewels to buy furniture for the new mansion, and these purchases were afterwards legally assigned to her by her husband.

Among the first visitors to their new home were Hayley and Flaxman, whom Emma had eagerly invited. A letter from the latter to the former commemorates an interesting little scene. As they entered, Nelson was just leaving the room. " Pray stop a little, my Lord," exclaimed Sir William; " I desire you to-shake hands with Mr. Flaxman, for he is a man as extraordinary, in his way, as you are in yours. Believe me, he is the sculptor who ought to make your monument." " Is he ? " replied Nelson, seizing his hand with alacrity; "then I heartily wish he may." And eventually he did.

This year was to link her and Nelson for ever. It was the year of Horatia's birth, of the Copenhagen

victory, of the preliminaries to the acquirement of Merton.

"Sooner shall Britain's sons resign

The empire of the sea ; Than Henry shall renounce his faith And plighted vows to thee!

And waves on waves shall cease to roll,

And tides forget to flow, Ere thy true Henry's constant love

Or ebb or change shall know." 1

" I want but one true heart; there can be but one love, although many real well-wishers," is his prose version in a hitherto unpublished letter.

These were the refrains of all this year, and, indeed, of the little span allotted to Nelson before he was no more seen.

Emma had an ordeal to pass through with a light step and a bright face. She had forfeited the comfort of that sense of innocence which she had welcomed ten years before. She awaited Nelson's child, and none but her mother and Nelson were to know it. She was to seem as if nothing chequered her dance of gaiety. Old friends flocked around her. Greville was a constant caller, curious about her, vigilant over his uncle. Her old supporter, Louis Dutens, was also in attendance. The stricken Romney, who pined for the sight of her, Was now in the north, but Hayley and Flaxman we have seen in her company. There was Mrs. Denis, too, her singing friend at Naples, and the hardly used Mrs. Billington. And—for she was always loyal to them—she delighted in beholding or hearing from her humble kindred again: the Connors, the Reynoldses, the Moores of Liverpool; and that

kelson's verses enclosed in his letter to Emma of February ii, 1801; Nelson Letters, vol. i. p. 30.

daughter, long ago parted from her by Greville, Emma " Carew." And there were Bohemian refugees from Naples, the Banti among their number, who in after days were less than grateful to their impetuous patroness. New friends also pressed for her acquaintance. There was Nelson's " smart" relative Mrs. Walpole, a fribble of fashion in the Prince of Wales's set, Mrs. Udney and a Mrs. Nisbet, with their frivolous on-hangers. But, more acceptable than these, were Nelson's country sisters and sister-in-law, who loved her at first sight and never relinquished their friendship. With her soul of attitudes, she must have felt herself in a double mood—heroic under strain, and laughtersome at care. The artistic and musical world raved of her afresh; they might well now have celebrated her both as " La Penserosa " and " L'Allegra." It was about this time that Walter Savage Landor sang of her—

" Gone are the Sirens from their sunny shore, The Muses afterwards were heard no more, But of the Graces there remains but one— Gods name her Emma, mortals, Hamilton."

And perhaps too he remembered her when he wrote of Dido—

" Ill-starred Elisa, hence arose Thy faithless joys, thy steadfast woes."

Of old she had been praised for her tarantella. Nothing more beautiful could be imagined, was Lady Malmesbury's verdict more than five years earlier. How was Emma now to trip it through heavy trial, and hide an aching heart with smiles and songs ? Misguided love lent her strength, and its misguidance found out the way. She was ready to sacrifice everything, and to forsake all for one whose absence must mean her own and her country's glory. Sir William,

out of the saddle, was practically in hospital; Nelson, practically in hospital, longed for the saddle once more.

The Northern Coalition threatened a now isolated Britain with a stroke more formidable than the Southern had done formerly. Napoleon was exultant. Sir William, who really worshipped Nelson, and for whom Emma cared to the last, found himself none the less rather thankful that Nelson was off in search of fresh triumphs, and, with him, the disturbing clamour of hero-worship. He longed for his little fishing expeditions and picture hunts; he was anxious about his pension, 1 his late wife's property as well as the tatters of his own. So, committing with a sigh the racket of life to his demonstrative Emma, he resigned himself to the worldly wisdom of his calculating and still bachelor nephew, Greville, whose ruling motive had always been interest. Zeal was not in Greville's nature, but something like it coloured his coldness whenever chattels were concerned. He was studiously respectful to Nelson. He was amiably attentive to his " aunt." All the same, he was already tincturing Hamilton's mind with an alien cynicism; he and Sir William were gradually forming a little northern coalition of their own. While he exerted himself in assiduously forwarding Sir William's claim on the generosity of the Government, he took good care to discourage any expenditure that might anticipate a chance so doubtful.